Descent (Kissed by Death) - Tara Fuller Page 0,17

been unexpectedly added when I’d interfered? I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to that, but I needed it.

Father peered up at me and raised a brow. “What is it now?”

“Was he…was Tyler on your list today?” I asked, heart in my throat.

He tapped a gold pen against his glass desk, inspecting me, trying to see through me again. “He’s dead. Why wouldn’t he have been on my list?”

“I interfered,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to. I was only doing my job, but I kept him there. He wouldn’t have been there if…”

I didn’t finish. I didn’t even know why I felt the need to explain. Father knew all of this. He owned me. He knew everything I did.

“No,” he finally answered. “He was an add-on. An unexpected death. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

He was calmer than I’d expected, but a dangerous electricity told me I wasn’t out of the woods. I knew Father would never harm me, but I also knew he could be creative when proving a point. None of that assuaged the dark, soul-changing guilt eating away at my insides.

I bit my bottom lip and shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But…he’s at peace, right? He’ll never know pain again. He’s with the person he loves.”

“Is he now?” Father seemed surprised, as if he’d expected Tyler’s soul to take another route to eternity. He didn’t know Tyler. He’d only seen the ugly parts. But that’s what Father did. He was a man surrounded by death and destruction. He didn’t know how to see the good. It’s why I’d been sent to him. He tapped on his tablet and a dark expression spread over his face as he read the text there.

“Father?”

He held up a hand to quiet me and rose from his chair. He swiped a hand over the starlit glass wall behind him. Images of the dead and dying and damned appeared, and he sifted through them. Did he remember I was in the room? I stepped back toward the door, away from the awful display spread out before me. There was so much death. So much darkness. They were only pictures, but even across all that space I could feel their pain. It reached for me, luring me, trying to pull me under.

He stopped on one image that suddenly filled the wall. A jolt of blue current crackled along the walls, and tension filled his wide shoulders. I inched around him trying to see what had him so upset.

“Gwendolyn, leave the room,” he growled.

I would have left. I should have left. But I couldn’t hide from the image staring back at me. It was a broken, sobbing mess of a boy. A horde of creatures dragged him through a bed of thorns, tearing at him, pulling him apart. He screamed, and they cackled with sick, unrestrained glee. My stomach lurched with an unfamiliar feeling so strong I fell to my knees. A choked sound tore up out of my throat, one that didn’t sound like me at all.

Oh God…I was feeling it. His pain. His torment. Across whatever Hell he was trapped in, it infected me like poison. Why would I feel this? Pain like this, across this much space, could be felt only when you’d bonded yourself to a soul. Guardians experienced it, but not one of us. I grabbed hold of the desk and peered through blurry vision at the boy on the wall.

“Gwen!” Father rushed around his desk and touched my shoulder. I flinched under his touch, and he swiped a hand through the air to clear the screen. He didn’t clear it fast enough. In an instant the pain drained away with the image, and Father’s fear took its place, heavy and insistent. I blinked it all away and scrambled away from his hands. Away from the truth.

“Gwen…”

I looked over his shoulder at the wall, and in that moment, my tiny corner of the world collapsed. It hadn’t just been a boy. It had been Tyler. And he was in Hell.

“What was that?” I gasped. “W-why was he there? That has to be a mistake. Tell me it’s a mistake, Father.”

He leaned against his desk, eyes wary. “It was a mistake.”

“How?”

Thunder rumbled overhead, and the air crackled between us. His brow furrowed. “I intend to find out.”

“We have to save him, Father,” I pleaded. “We can’t leave him down there. Send someone. Send me!”

“No.” His answer was hard, unwavering. I couldn’t accept it.

“But he doesn’t deserve—”

“Do you have